


Serenitas

by In_Time_of_Peril



Category: Bernice Summerfield (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who
Genre: F/F, Gen, SummerSong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3813223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_Time_of_Peril/pseuds/In_Time_of_Peril
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of a dig on the planet Serenity, Benny receives an important letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serenitas

Bernice Summerfield had no need to wonder just how the letter got to her in the middle of a field camp on Serenity; nor did she question who in the universe still sent letters in this day and age.  The envelope crackled under her fingers, and she caught a whiff of lemon verbena and cinnamon as she popped it open.  
  
The handwriting was familiar, but not the sort of familiar that she was expecting.  It was one that changed every so often.  A handwriting that she had not seen in any form for a very long time.  
  
 _Benny,_  
 _I never really thought I would write this.  I knew the day must come, but coward me thought I’d never be able to put the words on paper._  
  
 _It’s over now.  She’s gone.  I won’t write the name; you know who.  I won’t tell you what happened right now, or where, or how, because you’re less a coward than I, and just as much a fool, so you’d go off and try some rescue mission.  I know you would, because I’ve thought of doing the same._  
  
 _Don’t worry over her, though.  Where she is, and how she is, everything is all right.  She’s as safe as she can be, and won’t be in pain, though the rest of us who knew her must be._  
  
 _No doubt she left things with you.  Some of them may be dangerous, and some of them may pertain to me, or - other things that I can’t write about.  Leave them be for now, please?  Don’t go digging around through her life now, as she wouldn’t have wanted you to.  She trusted you not to while she was living that life, and so she should be able to trust you now._  
  
 _I don’t know when or if it will ever stop hurting._  
  
The words stopped there.  No signature, no tear stains on the page; just words about loss and moving on.  Benny stared for ages until someone came and tapped her on the shoulder.  
  
“We’ve breached the final chamber, Professor Summerfield.  Should we…”  
  
Standing abruptly, Benny fixed a grin on her face and nodded toward the tents.  
  
“I think we’d best leave off for the day, Fellaron.  Looks like there’s a storm coming on.”  
  
The Andromedan student looked confused, but nodded and turned to go inform the others.  Benny, for her part, wandered toward one of the tents, crumpling the letter in her hands without thinking.  
******  
Many would agree that a little drink now and then to drown out one’s sorrows is not always a bad thing.  Benny might have been in that camp, but as it stood now, two days after receiving the Doctor’s letter, she was in the midst of a hangover of terrifying power and could not be bothered to have an opinion on much at all.  
  
Her head throbbed in time to some old song that she had heard a million times.  Worse, though, was the ache in her hand.  She thought at first that she had slept on it, but this was not the tingle of nerve compression or the like.  
  
“Bloody…” she muttered, looking down and wondering when during her little spree she had slipped the ring on.  She had never even considered wearing it for ages and now there it was, glowing dully on her finger.  
  
Her tent was a mess, things strewn about every which way.  “Trashed,” Ace would say.  River would have called it “busy,” and the Doctor in most incarnations would probably just shake his head and then find somewhere to sit.  
  
Benny sat up on the edge of the crates she had passed out on, kicked her boots together, and let out a low groan as the spinning in her head sped up for a moment.  
  
“Oh Goddess.”  
******  
Somewhere, Braxiatel must be turning over in his grave, or at the very least scoffing at her from whatever passed for a Time Lord afterlife.  
  
Benny placed the last charge, then shone her torch around the interior of the chamber one last time.  The team had already removed and catalogued most of the finds, so the only things of real import left where the items that Benny herself had put here.  
  
Her finger pulsed again, a tiny twitch of pain like touching a still-glowing match head.  Without looking, Benny fiddled the ring off and tossed it into the chamber.  It glittered through the torch beam, then spun and landed on the catafalque across the space.  Of course, it came to rest right next to its mate.  
  
“That’s as it should be,” someone said, and Benny spun around, the light from the torch spilling erratically along the walls.  
  
“River?”  
  
She had known that voice, the husk and the purr of it.  She knew it so well that here and now, in a moment of pain, she had imagined it.  That was nothing new.  Sometimes she imagined Jason’s voice, or Guy’s.  She imagined the voices, but the ones the sounds belonged to were never there anymore, except in dreams.  
  
Checking the charges one more time, Benny huffed out a heavy breath and made her way out of the tomb.  She went slowly, easily, paying out wire behind her until she emerged into the upper air and knelt, hand scrambling through the dirt for the switchbox.  A few moments of pressing things together, snapping connectors down, and it was all ready.  Dreadfully old-fashioned and clunky, but she like it that way, sometimes.  
  
River would have liked it that way too.  
  
“Here’s to those nights on Esto and Arcadia,” Benny said, flipping three switches, then tossing the device into the mouth of the tomb.  
  
There would be twenty seconds to get safely back to the distance of the tents.  Benny was uncertain that she wanted to make it that far.  She spun on her heel and went quickly away for a few steps, but then she slowed.  If she broke into a run now, she would make it.  She would be all right.  
  
She stopped dead, hearing the distant chirp of the countdown.  
  
“I could just stay here and probably get buried under debris,” she mused.  
  
 _“Or you could run,”_ a voice answered in her head, _“and not be an idiot.”_  
  
It was like a hand had slapped itself firmly between her shoulder blades with that last word.  Bernice Summerfield, who had lived through a billion adventures and been the nexus of a billion schemes, took off running for all she was worth.  All she carried away from the tomb was a torch, a satchel, and a head currently brimming over with memories.  
  
The charges went, the tomb shuddered, and somewhere on a plain of Serenity, Bernice Summerfield hit the dirt, arms over her head, sobs choking their way out of her throat as the dust swirled past.


End file.
